Vienna: Iran nuclear talks entered on Thursday the decisive, dangerous endgame with a final round of hardball negotiations potentially going all the way to a July 20 finish line.
The deal being sought by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany would finally ease fears of Tehran getting nuclear weapons and silence talk of war, in exchange for ending punishing sanctions on the Islamic republic.
With Sunni Islamic insurgents overrunning large parts of Iraq and Syria in chaos after years of civil war, this could help Tehran and the West normalise relations at an explosive time in the Middle East.
“In this troubled world, the chance does not often arise to reach an agreement peacefully that will meet the essential and publicly expressed needs of all sides, make the world safer, ease regional tensions and enable greater prosperity,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said this week.
In a Washington Post tribune, he warned Iran not to “squander a historic opportunity to end Iran’s economic and diplomatic isolation and improve the lives of their people”.
The P5+1 powers have proposed a “series of reasonable, verifiable and easily achievable measures that would ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon and that its program is limited to peaceful purpose,” he said. “What will Iran choose? Despite many months of discussion, we don’t know yet.” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in a video message, called the talks a “unique opportunity to make history”, saying success would allow both sides to address “common challenges” such as Iraq.
But with major differences apparent after five rounds of talks seeking to secure a deal by July 20 — when an interim deal from November expires — Zarif said in French daily Le Monde that some among the P5+1 were suffering from “illusions”.
The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany want Iran to reduce drastically in scope its nuclear activities in order to render any Iranian drive to assemble a weapon all but impossible.
This would include in particular Iran slashing its capacities to enrich uranium, a process that produces nuclear fuel but also, at high purities, the core of a nuclear weapon. In itself, that would represent a concession to Iran, which is defying six UN Security Council resolutions ordering it cease all enrichment.
But Iran insists it has made too many advances in uranium enrichment to turn the clock back. It rejects any need to cut its number of centrifuges and says it even needs to expand their number to fuel a fleet of future nuclear power plants — facilities that it would be decades away from having. (AFP)
